Students protest vs hate speech on campus

CHICAGO, March 9 – A multiracial crowd of dozens of students and workers rallied and marched across the campus of the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC) to protest the administration’s decision to allow fascist scum Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk space to spread their brand of gutter racism and sexism. Members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and our friends joined the action to support the fight and spread communist revolution as the only alternative to fascism, capitalism’s response to a crisis in their system.

Owens and Kirk are right wing organizers and talk show hosts. They travel across the U.S. promoting open sexism, mainly against trans workers. They serve the domestic U.S. capitalists who are mainly represented by the Republican Party. But these are the Small Fascists (see Glossary, page 6).

Although the threat presented by these open fascists is very real for our class, PLP holds that they do not represent the primary danger for workers – the finance capital, liberal bosses within President Joe Biden’s camp do. These are the Big Fascists, the finance capitalists who want to maintain their worldwide empire. They want a united working class brainwashed by patriotism and willing to fight and die in a world war to defend these capitalist’s profits.

So while we directly confront these gutter racists head on, we need to fight even harder against the multicultural, liberal Big Fascist bosses that seek to disarm our class through shallow identity politics as they build the path to all-class unity and imperialist war.

Fascism is at its core not just about “wicked people” but rather the desperate strategies employed by all capitalist bosses to save their profit system in crisis. We need to build our international Party to overthrow the capitalist system that ultimately gives rise to fascism and war–no matter the appearance or the promises of the bosses at the top

Fight gutter fascists head on
The anti-fascist, antisexist students and workers first gathered at the quad area to assemble before marching a short distance across campus to the forum site. Those of us in PLP and our friends came equipped with signs, a flyer about growing fascism, and copies of CHALLENGE in order to sharpen the militancy of the protest.

At first, the leaders of the march and their marshals directed the protestors to an open site on the other side of the street from the forum. But after a short while enough participants pushed to be closer to where the gutter fascists were entering. Once there, we were able to confront the open fascists more directly.

Organizers from different student groups led chants and gave speeches that shared their “disappointment” that the university had permitted the forum. All in all, a naïve tone dominated the politics of the event, as if we could ever trust the university bosses (or any boss) to really be on the side of the students or workers.

Thankfully, a more militant Black student took the megaphone and called for more open confrontation with the fascist goons. He recalled recent experiences that he had getting arrested while protesting against the racist Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) in more remote areas of the state. Other speakers followed, highlighting the connections to March 2016 when a multiracial crowd of hundreds of protestors were able to shut down a Donald Trump rally (see CHALLENGE, 3/25/16).

Self-critically, our contingent of PLP members and friends could have been bolder in giving leadership to this event. Even though the protestors moved across the street to be closer, there was still a good fifty yards separating us from the entrance where the pro-fascists were entering. The working class can’t be satisfied with taking the “moral high ground” against the fascist foot soldiers of the capitalist class – we need to organize to attack them head on! As such, we need to be much less timid in sharpening the struggle in these settings.

Capitalist bosses, big and small, attack workers
The recent rise of fascist hate speech is nothing new under capitalism. As the profit system barrels through crisis after crisis en route to world war, we can expect to see more scum like Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk getting platforms to scapegoat sections of the working class for the failures of capitalism.

At present, LGBTQ+ workers are a principal target for the domestically-oriented Small Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class that Kirk and Owens belong to. These Small Fascists pin practically everything wrong with capitalist society on LGBTQ+ workers, maliciously smearing them. In doing so, they are directly responsible for obscene rates of violence committed against LGBTQ+ workers and youth, particularly Black and Latin workers who are transgender. We need to fight side by side as a united class against the attempts by the bosses to divide and attack us.

However, to side with the “lesser evil” liberal bosses in this battle is the kiss of death. The still-dominant Big Fascist bosses like those in charge of Chicago and UIC pay lip service to “diversity” and other high-minded concepts while still opening the door for gutter racists in their own backyard. They lie to our face and stab us in the back, all the while promoting a “friendlier” multiracial capitalism.

By avoiding more overt fascist ideology, they can package a more insidious version of pro-capitalist nationalism that is necessary to win our class – including many LGBTQ+ workers -- to future bloodbaths against imperialist rivals like China and Russia. There is no “lesser-evil” – the whole system has got to go!

Communist revolution is the only solution
To accomplish a communist revolution to get rid of capitalism, we need the mass international PLP and our own Red Army. The fascists -- Big and Small -- already have a wide head start on organizing and arming themselves. But they are no match for a united working class armed with communist politics and leadership! Join PLP and fight back today!